Seeing lots of people wondering “why don’t transmascs talk about their own experiences of marginalisation or have words for it” recently, which is awesome!

But we do! So lets talk about it!

(This is not a venting/blaming place towards any group, those comments will get a block) The invisibility of transmascs has meant that in multiple ways, people don't believe us when we talk about ourselves

So we have learned to not speak up at all or only in private - and as a group with high anxiety, its often our default to go quiet when there is any pushback

Everyone is genderfluid, and society already accepts that. Our sense of our gender and expression of it changes over time - there is a vast difference between how we feel gender at age 5 vs 12, 16, 23, 45, 95 It shifts, we discover things about ourselves, our bodies change and age, the world changes around us and we reflect that through fashion, we have different body language, behaviour, needs, wants and desires, and can rediscover things we grew out of as time goes on

Inspection miracle, the property manager was the guy who loves us and our landlord wants to keep us here til we want to leave, and will then demolish the shitty old house - which means when I asked if we can make changes he interrupted to say "go for it". The odds of getting that property manager - who is retired and only returned to cover someone who is sick for a bit of xmas cash - and a lovely couple who kept giving us tips on how to fix things that aren't technically their responsibility and permission to do what we want...

"Why didn't older generations do something about ___?"

I think the reality of life before and during the early internet isn't something people know about. Its never depicted anywhere because it was so slooowwww and boring.

I can't stress how slow the flow of information was. Its not like things were slow and boring, then the internet came and everything was fast. The internet took a long time to turn into what it is today, and lots of people didn't even have it at all or even see the point of it for ages too. And it wasn't very good.

If you HAVEN'T experienced longterm emotional trauma (eg parent/partner abuse etc), you might not have the skills to hear weasel words as well as you think you do. People in those situations are often forced to learn to use them, to please their abuser or else expect violence. Weasel words are ways we say things to obfuscate our true intentions or meaning. They're usually intentionally ambiguous, relying on the listener to assume what they wanted to hear or give the benefit of the doubt. It can be simple or complex.

"Do you like it?"
WW: "Not bad!"

You don't need to have a binary opinion on everything. You rarely need a binary opinion on anything. Almost nothing is bad or good. Most of the time things are neutral, they're just concepts or events, then we put meaning to it based on our interpretation and what it means to us. And, crucially, every single person on the planet has an individual and complex inner world equally important to them as yours, based on every lived experience they've ever had and what it all felt like to them, and the absence of everything else.

Lot of city folk suddenly discovering the govt doesn't give a fuck about people living in the country "How can this happen in this country in 2021?!"

Because its a privilege to have multiple funded hospitals with available room within driving distance. I remember driving ages to a hospital as a kid and when we got there it was just closed, not enough funding, shut down for good

I can't find a way to add this to the other thread without sounding gross or patronising but holy shit it infuriates me that local drag performers in the US have to grab tips from the audience their entire act, as just one microcosm of an example and a comparison: The locallest of drag acts here can do a performance, still wearing something they made out of trash, but they can GENERALLY do it as an outlet of creativity and do any type of performance they want to the delight of the audience of other poor queers who got in for a few bucks

Fish don't know they're in water.

US queers don't seem to know much of their lateral violence is from everyone being in a state of extreme survival and poverty due to hypercapitalism and no sense of safety means no sense of real threat vs realistically, just a perceived threat. Its heartbreaking looking in from the outside, because the behaviour is so understandable when you put all the layers together. No workers rights, so you're tired to the bone and could have zero income any moment. No welfare, so you're one event away from being houseless.

As a Survivor, with gentle love: if you are feeling threatened/triggered by sexual content, the urge to control/remove that content for EVERYONE may be a sign you have complex trauma to work through, haven't been allowed to develop assertive skills, had your identity denied... As important and real as your feelings around sex are, so are other's need to express it, with so much nuance, complexity and individual needs on all sides. Its a convoluted thing, sex, and you're allowed to feel anything about it. But you can't control others' relationship to it

Instead of focusing on Genderfck, I'm thinking about the type of people that are vulnerable to the predatory manipulation they're using, why that manipulation works on them, and what things we can do to support them and guide them away from harm and into real community. "Real community" is already warped for them - they HAVE a community of other people duped by this sickly sweet predator. I'm sure it works for them, too! The sick thing is they already have what is being sold to them, but this person is saying "you wouldn't have this without me"

The Genderfck thing is bullshit but its ALSO predatory! This person is relying on their trans identity to make you more likely to trust them not to harm you. They're building on that by using safe-sounding language that further lulls you into thinking they're ALREADY a friend. "(That's me!)" - redundant, centres self in cutesy way
"...chance to get live coaching from me... learn from watching me" - centres self and what they might do without promising anything

Notice how a lot of this is subjective, without guaranteeing outcomes or your needs

I keep seeing takes I want to discuss/ demystify/ deconstruct, but I find it very difficult to stay "on topic". I can't see things as disconnected, single societal issues, so I half make a thread and then give up. So here's a thread on seeing social issues holistically. TL;DR: everything is connected. Everything. All of it. And that complexity can feel overwhelming, or difficult to remember, but it can also be uniting and galvanising. Human experience is infinitely nuanced, interconnected, and individual. Seeing this or not can shape politics.

I want to talk about what I call compounding female socialisation for transmasc folk. As always, I speak from my own experience and don't invite comparison with transfemmes - our lived experiences don't negate eachother. Always nonbinary inclusive, always speaking calmly.

https://twitter.com/stagrunner/status/1086406076734586880

This thread and all the replies within is something I see repeated over and over among transmascs - warily suggesting we face issues specific to us like any minority does, expecting a lot of pushback for our lived experience because we're seen =to cis men.

With a big election looming and trans people one of the favoured punching bags of politicians and media, I want to talk about a specific and insidious type of misogynist transphobia that I see rarely touched on - and almost never challenged.

CW: transphobia chat, sui*/depression There's a flavour of transphobia that is so ingrained in patriarchal views it is near indistinguishable from general sexism. I struggle to feel ANY difference between the patronising sexism I experienced when the world saw me as a girl, and this transphobia that seeks to erase me

Lets get a little uncomfortable together and talk about trans infighting. I'm not subtweeting, anything I reference I've seen from multiple people. Imagine anything typed with a calm voice, I'm not sardonic or biting here. White trans folk may feel challenged, but we need it. CW: all the shit trans folk experience including sui*, violence, murder, anxiety, depression, discrimination, erasure, as well as racism, and refugees in detention camps. I do not invite comparison or argument in the comments. I compare ONLY to give context. Cis folk, look only.

TW: oldschool transphobia
The thing about "don't use x term for x group" is this discussion really only exists online. Offline, there are many predominantly older people who identify in extremely individual ways that they spent decades fighting to be, that now get told they can't I know trans men that call themselves lesbians for so many reasons - maybe they never go on T or get any surgeries because its an intrinsic part of their identity and who they are to have the body they do - it bears scars of being in punchups with skinheads and police violence.

For TDoV I'd like to highlight the mental health statistics of transmasculine people. I don't wish to invite comparison between trans men and trans women, and the stats I look at also separate nonbinary people and those with intersex variations (as well as cis gay/bi people). I'm not going to speak on experiences I don't know, so I'm focusing on trans men. The numbers are bleak, so please don't read on if you're not up to it.
TW: depression, anxiety, sui*, sexism/misogyny
lgbtihealth.org.au/statistics/
Keep in mind, stats are predominantly from Australia